Research Finds Breast Cancer Signaling Pathway

That alone is significant enough, but among African-American women, there is a particular type of breast cancer which is especially lethal.

This sub-type of breast cancer is found in 25% of cases in African American women - double the rate of the general population. Worse, the mortality rate is very high.

The breakthrough for this type of breast cancer is that, according to the study:

An intra cellular pathway not previously linked to breast cancer is driving a sub-type of the disease that is highly lethal and disproportionately over-represented in African American women.

The pathway regulates how cells identify and destroy proteins and represents a class of genes called proteasome targeting complexes. The work shows that basal cancer cells degrade the tumor suppressor gene p27 by making a new type of proteasome targeting complex. The gene p27 is one of a handful of proteins that are expressed in normal cells and act to prevent rapid cell growth, which is indicative of cancer.

What the heck does that mean? OK, for the layperson, that means that the basal (a type of) cancer cells in this particular sub-type degrade gene p27 ... with this gene degraded, since it is one of those that act to prevent rapid cell growth, viola, you are prone to cancer.

Tim Lane, senior author of the research paper and a researcher at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center said:

"The mortality rates in this subgroup of cancer are very high. The possibility that this new proteasome targeting complex might provide targets for therapeutic intervention is a completely new area for breast cancer research."

So, once again, what does that mean? It means that now that they have precisely determined the "targeting complex," they can target that with medicine, chemotherapy, and the like, once they figure out how to do so, of course.

Lane added:

"This research has the potential to identify clinically relevant markers of a large subgroup of human breast cancer and find a novel therapeutic target that could be exploited with appropriate pharmaceutical agents. We need a new paradigm to think about how to treat these cancers."

The team is still working to determine why these types of breast cancers are more prevalent in African-American women. The study was conducted with both animal models and human breast cancer cell lines, and is published in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Genes and Development.